For all the efforts marketers are putting into driving sales through content, it seems social media users in the Asia-Pacific are still after the ‘same old’ incentives when it comes to the brands they follow.

In a survey of over 4,000 consumers around nine key markets, including Australia, China, India, Indonesia and South Korea, 35% said they followed a brand on social for discounts and promotions - the most-commonly cited reason for doing so.

Other, less-popular reasons for landing on branded social pages included the pursuit of general news (26%), exclusive content (16%) and ‘just loving’ the company (15%).

The results stress a need for brands to continue their publishing of Facebook and Twitter offers in order to maintain their social communities, or risk losing an audience.

The ‘shareability’ factor

Conducted by PR firm Waggener Edstrom, the study found varying levels of inclination in terms of each market’s tendency to follow a brand on social. In Australia, for example, only 53% said they felt “somewhat” or “very likely” to listen to a brand on their favourite networks.

In Indonesia, this rose to 89% of social media users, and up to 90% in India.

When it came to the most popular networks for sharing content, the results followed a more similar set of lines. Facebook was the top choice for users in Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Philippines, also making the top three in Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and India.

The only list which didn’t contain a mention of Facebook was China, which ranked IM platforms WeChat and QQ and microblogging site Sina Weibo as the most-popular places to share content.

An infographic from Waggener Edstrom also shares insights on the most popular forms of shareable content and the main sources for purchase decisions. The image, in full, can be found below.

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Richard Towey

Richard is a former head of content at PerformanceIN. After many years spent covering developments from the automotive, sports, travel and finance sectors, he eventually turned his full attention to reporting on stories from the fast-evolving world of digital marketing.